A piracy utopia - the ultimate media sharing platform

The internet needs a single website that offers all popular media content in one place. Imagine a platform on I2P that lets users easily find and download any movie, TV show, music album, book, or game without restrictions.

This website could operate like Netflix did originally - offering a huge library of media to browse and instantly access. But it would go beyond just movies and shows to include music, books, comics, audiobooks, software, and more.

The site would rely on user contributions to build its catalogue. Users could upload files, manually tag and organize content into collections, or pay money to earn points for downloading. The platform would make it simple to find exactly what you want thanks to crowdsourced curation of metadata.

Some key features this utopian piracy site could offer:

  • Social features like user profiles, ratings, reviews
  • Content suggestion algorithms personalized for each user
  • Rewards and incentive programs for active uploaders/curators
  • Multi-device access and automatic syncing of files
  • Robust organization system with custom tags and collections
  • Safeguarded privacy through technology like I2P and encryption
  • One-click downloading of files, collections, and tags

By bringing everything together in one place, enforcing sharing norms, and facilitating discovery, this platform could be the ultimate realization of effortless piracy. A single website containing a never-ending trove of accessible media. A utopia for consumers frustrated by fractured streaming services and draconian DRM. The piracy world’s killer app.

What do you think? Could a platform like this gain traction and survive ongoing anti-piracy efforts? What other features would make the ideal file sharing site? I’m curious to hear this community’s thoughts on the concept!

3yiyo3,

Theres a lot of discussion here against centralization, but i wonder how possible it would be to maintain a federated infraestructure and build on top a mega meta search engine for centralization of resources

3yiyo3,

That would be amazing and even building a streaming app in too of it to compete with strraming services. Something similar to stremio for films and a music streaming service

kotobuki09,

Zlibrary nowadays also have to open different Z point for their services so I don’t think centralized is the way to go. Especially, it’s easier for the government to track everything with modern technology.

_TK,

A lot of folks are talking about how a centralized repository would be a big target for governments, ISPs and rights holders, but I have a different angle.

Who is going to pay for all of that development and maintenance? We are pirates. We don’t pay for stuff. It’s kind of our thing.

Additionally, you are proposing an option with social features and algorithms. Both are a negative because they necessarily encourage users to explicitly say what they have been downloading or uploading in a way that is being logged and therefore is evidence against them should a media company want to push for legal action.

SuperSpecialNickname,

You can kind of get that with qbitorrent and it’s search engine.

CoderSupreme,

Not even close.

jherazob,
@jherazob@beehaw.org avatar

Centralizing the web is how we got into the current mess, very much no

FeelThePower,
@FeelThePower@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

i do not think a centralized effort would work for pirated content. look at all the websites that have gone down over the years.

Leate_Wonceslace,
@Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

I have this idea knocking around my head for a website that collects artwork (including things like video games, etc.), has a history of how each thing was developed, and includes tags and links to articles. It would also have copies of each art piece, and distribute them to countries where they can be legally distributed. It’s not something I could ever actually make, but it’s something that I want to exist.

Rabbit,

Decentralization has always been the way for piracy, since many places inevitably go down throughout the years but it being spread out is what keeps everything from being taken down by a single closure. So while not convenient it makes it more resilient.

emeralddawn45,

This is a terrible idea. There’s plenty of resources out there that has links to everything you could ever want, why would it all need to be stored in one place. The piracy megathread has resources for everything you mentioned, with redundancies and multiple sources. It’s really not that hard to find anything you need. If I want a book I go to a certain site, if I want software or games I have 2 or 3 torrent sites, if I want to stream TV or movies I have dedicated sites for that. What good does putting it all in one spot do except make that a bigger target?

EpicFailGuy,
EpicFailGuy avatar

@CoderSupreme

Something very similar to what you describe JUST got announced a couple of weeks ago at Defcom in Vegas by Cult of the Dead Cow

well ... at least the framework for it .... If you want to learn more watch this (it's a little long but it's worth it)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb1lKscAMDQ

https://veilid.com/

https://cultdeadcow.com/tools/veilid.html

FordPrefect,

It’s planned to have communication features beyond file-transfer, but otherwise I’m not sure what similarity you’re seeing, to what the OP suggested…

CoderSupreme,

Yeah and IPFS is also JUST the same as I described, except it’s not and neither is this. I haven’t seen a single useful use case of IPFS and I doubt I will see one of this.

PeachMan,

No. There have been many attempts at this, and just as many failures. Centralization is not the answer.

Erika3sis, (edited )
@Erika3sis@hexbear.net avatar

My friend, you’re on the fediverse and saying that a single website would be the best way to achieve this. I think that decentralization such as federation or peer-to-peer would be a much better way to achieve a pirate’s utopia, because the decentralized approach guarantees that even if one part falls, the whole will remain.

That aside, if I can talk about “What other features would make the ideal file sharing site?” — for a pirate video streaming site in particular, my number one feature would easily be community-contributed subtitles. In the list of subtitle tracks, each track would have two checkboxes, one for text and the other for TTS (this would be used for audio description and makeshift voice-over dubs). For rarer languages without reliable TTS, users would be encouraged to submit voice recordings, which might be anonymized with AI to sound like the TTS voice.

Subtitling would be done with a danmaku-esque system, so that people can choose to contribute just a few pieces here and there and wait for other contributors or continue later, rather than just one person needing to subtitle everything. Users might be able to rate subtitle tracks based on quality and completeness, too. A system of upvotes and downvotes on individual subtitles, as well as both manual and automated moderation, would prevent abuse.

petrescatraian,

@CoderSupreme This would sadly also be easier for any interested party to block it. i.e. ISPs could block it easier, copyright holders could have an easier time suing the platform owners and have it shut down and if the platform gets big and popular enough (like, for example, how YouTube is for videos of any sort) some content that would be hosted exclusively on that platform would likely be gone for good.

For a platform this big to survive and serve its original purpose, unhindered by DMCAs and stuff, it would be really, really hard.

Plus, the internet now is more regulated than it was 20-30 years ago when nowadays popular names like Piratebay first appeared.

And I personally don't mind going to a few dozen websites that only a handful of people on the internet know in order to get my stuff. If any of that website gets too popular, it risks closure. Better to only have 1 website of these closed instead of all these.

ToxicDivinity,
@ToxicDivinity@hexbear.net avatar

It would get shutdown by multiple governments pretty quick probably

EpicFailGuy,
EpicFailGuy avatar

@ToxicDivinity

@CoderSupreme

won't be if it's distributed

FordPrefect,

True, and we have that already.

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